issue
#321
10 December 2002
t
a l k i n g a b o u t c a d
|
issue
#321
|
|
|
Contents Autodesk
University: Hardware
Review: Below
the Radar, - - - - - -
|
From the Editor This is the last issue for 2002. I'll be taking my Christmas vacation for the next few weeks. See you back again on January 7, 2003!
"Eschew the HTML!" Big backlash against HTML format. Within hours of last week's upFront.eZine, I received dozens of emails requesting that I _not_ switch this e-newsletter to HTML. There was one lone proponent, plus one vote for PDF and a vote for Word format. Reasons readers had for going against HTML include:
So, I'll stay with plain text. If you are really keen to read upFront.eZine in HTML, you can always read the current issue online at http://www.upfrontezine.com/current.htm -- as over 600 others already do. Autodesk University 2002 Last time I was in Las Vegas was 1987 for Comdex, a time when 60,000 attendees were considered a success. When Comdex'02 was held a couple weeks back, 120,000 wasn't enuf to keep the organizers from threatening bankruptcy. How expectations change. Back then, Las Vegas was a boring place for us non-gambler geeks who understood the odds, and $70 was w-a-y too much to see Frank Sinatra in person. Over the last decade, I heard the gambling casinos were attempting to make the city family-friendly. Did it work? Yes. The French-themed 'Paris Las Vegas' casino (2,916 rooms) is simply spectacular -- inside and out -- with its recreated 'la Tour d'Eiffel', 'Arc de Triump', and inner courtyards that capture the feel of twisting streets in small French towns. The 6.5 acres (2.9 ha) of fountains at the Bellagio casino (3,000 rooms) synchronize with pop and classical music -- and thumb their wispy fingers at the surrounding desert. The cramped architecture of the 'New York New York' casino (2,024 rooms) didn't impress me, nor did the distant Egyptian-themed 'Luxor' (4,400 rooms) with its full-size (and full-color -- oops!) sphinx and jet-black pyramid hotel with super-brite beacon of light. All paid for by people who don't understand the odds. Adesk U is sequestered at the 'MGM Grand' casino with its 5,034 hotel rooms, two shopping malls, convention center, wedding chapel (not church, note), eight pools, too many restaurants and show stages, and the countless gambling machines. Employees are called "crew." One AU attendee figures it's a half-mile hike from his room to the integrated convention center. Another confesses she hasn't left the hotel all entire week. Being owned by a media company, the ads blare inside and out from persistent speakers and overbright plasma screens. The entire wall behind the check-in counter blasts oversize ads at incoming guests. At night, the hotel's four wings bathe in ghoulish green spotlights that infect the inside of the hotel rooms themselves. A place for families? No. Not when you consider the sidewalks that mysteriously swerve away from the street to the front doors of gambling halls.Or the convenient overpasses (they're needed because The Strip is now 12 lanes wide) deposit you directly and without warning inside the casinos. Or the lack of benches in which to sit. Or the young Mexican workers snapping their catalogues of available prostitutes at passers-by ($60 for an in-room strip show, extra services extra, I s'pose). Ignore the glum hawkers, and they shove pornographic postcards into the hands of passers-by. LV NV gets to keep its "Sin City" moniker.
Keynote Address During the keynote speech, which occurred early in the week (I wasn't there), ceo Carol Bartz apparently emphasized the need to keep drawings digital, and not going to paper -- ever. The purpose was to promote DWF v6 and its ability to handle drawing sets and retain scale information. "The shape of the future looks like this: After that design data leaves your hands, it needs to stay in digital form," she proclaimed. . You can read excerpts of Ms Bartz's speech at http://www.directionsmag.com/features.php?feature_id=81 The emphasis on NOT plotting may, however, have dismayed major sponsor HP, who at its booth was pumping out E-size plots of non-CAD images. According to Adena Schutzberg's report <http://www.gismonitor.com/news/newsletter/archive/120502.php >, Autodesk employee "Lynn Allen later put it this way: 'Printing stops the intelligence process.' She quickly added that if you do need to print, using a printer from sponsor HP was quite appropriate." Some magazine (and e-newsletter) editors engage occasionally in the Do-we-please-the-sponsor-and-if-so-how-much? debate; who'd've thunk the debate would extend to software vendors
Booth Visits I met with some vendors, spent time with fellow CAD (and GIS) journalists, and attended one class -- but I can't tell you the primary reason for being in Las Vegas for another four months or so. (Adesk U 03 will be back in Las Vegas, Dec 2-5, 2003.)
ACS SOFTWARE: Todd Hayes describe how his company adapted its AutoEDMS software for NavCanada (the Canadian air traffic control service). This organization has a central computer in Ottawa serving up AutoCAD drawings to regional centers. NavCanada didn't want .dwg files clogging its WAN, so ACS figured out how to minimize the impact of xrefs on the network. http://www.acssoftware.com
ANSYS: DesignSpace is for analysis during the design process. It is launched from Inventor, allowing you to make more design iterations, and hence create more innovative products. A SolidWorks version is due in January. http://www.ansys.com/ansys/designspace.htm
LOGITECH: 3DConnexion is the new name for Logitech's high-end input devices. Patrish Shah told me that the mouse is doing too many functions and moves around too much. Instead, he suggests "dual mode" -- using a mouse and a "motion controller." The concept is that you navigate with your non-dominant hand, and execute with your dominant one. "Use," he urges,"SpaceBall, SpaceMouse, or CadMan for two minutes." Look for the Motion Control Keyboard in the new year, a Logitech keyboard with integrated motion controller. These products provide six dimensions of view manipulation: pan left-right-up-down and zoom in-out. http://www.3dconnexion.com
MATROX: See hardware review, below.
I had hoped to visit more booths, but: (1) I found the booth numbering system confusing; and (2) the exhibit hall closed a couple hours earlier than I expected. In the evening, Delmar Publishers (aka Autodesk Press) hosted a lovely dinner at the Craftsteak restaurant for its authors.
Photo Gallery The Paris Las Vegas casino's Eiffel Tower resides next the the Balley Casino with its lounge lizard look. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-1.jpg The inner courtyards of the Paris Las Vegas casino capture the feel of twisting streets. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-6.jpg The 6.5 water acres fronting the Bellagio casino. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-2.jpg The cramped architecture of the 'New York New York' casino. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-4.jpg One of the many casinos in the MGM Grand. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-3.jpg The grand hallway of the MGM Grand's convention center, location of Adesk U. http://www.upfrontezine.com/pix/lvnv-5.jpg
Hardware Review:
I don't often review hardware, but Matrox insisted on sending me their Perihelia graphics board. Readers may be interested in my experience with the "three-headed monster." - - - "Perihelia," the weather effect, is the sun shining through airborne ice crystals. Perihelia, the graphics board, has 128MB (US$399) or 256MB RAM (US$599) and impressive numbers (512-bit GPU, 256-bit DDR memory interface, 10-bit GigaColor technology) that don't mean much to me. The specs meant more to my son, Stefan, who found the board ran his games -- 'Tony Hawkes III' skateboarding, 'Need for Speed' road racing -- as fast on his 400MHz Pentium as ATI's Radeon 8500LE runs them on my 2.4GHZ Pentium. 'Need for Speed' is optimized for the Perihelia, making the scenery realistic enough to impress my wife, Heather, who isn't impressed with computers generally. Matrox was keen that I test: (1) its AutoCAD driver; (2) the bundled AEC-VIZ utility; and (3) its triple display capability. I ran into a problem even before installation: Perihelia has drivers for Windows 2000, XP, and Linux only; that meant my son had to first upgrade his computer (I wasn't going to contaminate mine!) from Windows 98SE to Win2K. Matrox had recommended I download the latest drivers, rather than use the CD. That failed until I also downloaded 20MB worth of .Net stuff from Microsoft's Web site. Despite being the "latest" drivers, I found a couple bugs in the install, which Matrox says they're now fixing. AutoCAD Driver: Yup, it has a display driver for AutoCAD, but I couldn't tell that it made a difference. No driver-specific options to tweak, either. It does, however, link to AEC|VIZ... AEC|VIZ: A separate app that displays DXF, DGN, and 3DS (but not DWG) 3D drawings in a VRML-like environment. A link with AutoCAD let me send a drawing (such as opera.dwg) direct to AEC/VIZ, and after a moment I could zoom, pan, tilt, and fly around. Comments from Stefan: "It's kinda cool. Zoom is a bit temperamental. Nice, it has an undo [of the last view change]. It would be good if it had a lock to prevent going 'underneath' the model [keep z=>0]." The point to AEC|VIZ is using it with multiple monitors. The idea is that you run AutoCAD on one (or two) monitors, and AEC|VIZ on the other. AEC|VIZ shows the 3D rendered (and clipped, if necessary) model; you manipulate the view in AEC|VIZ, and then click a button to send that view to AutoCAD. AEC|VIZ, in effect, controls the viewpoint, zoom, etc, in AutoCAD. Matrox says AEC|VIZ is faster than AutoCAD's 3dOrbit command for large assemblies. In addition, AEC|VIZ records walk-throughs and redlines, which can be packaged with a viewer, and sent by email. Triple Display: This part I wasn't looking forward to, since it involved unhooking the the LCD monitor from my wife's computer. In the interest of advancing human civilization, however... The Perihelia has two connectors to handle 2 digital displays, or three analog displays, and/or two video outputs (RCA and S-video), and combinations thereof. There's one correct way to connect two monitors to three possible connectors -- and five wrong ways. I finally got it right after breaking down to read the manual. The Perihelia driver works with multiple monitors in three ways:
Users have come up with alternate uses for the three monitors. One, for example, displays three different floors on the three monitors, allowing him to design services (electrical, plumbing, etc) between floors. Another displays the assembly drawing on one screen, and works with part drawings on the other screens. Below the Radar A summary of CAD industry news you may not have read elsewhere, or that I found interesting:
Graphisoft received certification its IFC 2x add-on for ArchiCAD, which can be downloaded free from http://www.graphisoft.com/ifc/download after registration . - - - GiveMePower is providing its PowerCAD software development system free to existing AutoCAD developers (regular fee is US$495). PowerCAD has LISP and C++ programming environments similar to that of AutoCAD's. The company says it has 130,000 users. http://www.givemepower.com/dev_plugin.html - - - Autodesk is shipping Building Systems v3 for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing designers. http://www.autodesk.com - - - MfgJobs.com says it has 10,000 work-wanted ads by "job-seeking manufacturing professionals." Employers and recruiters can access the site free until 2003 [Is that January 1 or December 31?]. http://www.mfgquote.com - - - CADATA Consulting's dwgBase RAD4CAD ((Rapid Application Development for CAD) lets you perform custom searches of CAD drawings searching without needing a CAD license. Free demo and tutorial from http://www.dwgbase.com - - - Moldflow will release Plastics Insight v4.0 for optimizing part and mold design of injection molded plastics on December 16. http://www.plasticszone.com - - - Spatial announced R10 of its 3D modeling products: ACIS Modeler, ACIS PHL, and ACIS Deformable Modeling. http://www.spatial.com - - - Cyco Software will release its AutoManager Publishing Module for Collaborative Web Engineering Solutions for Streamline, bom.com, Open Text, Netvendor, and others -- but the release date was not announced. http://www.cyco.com - - - Under its "new" name of Avatech Solutions, PlanetCAD released Proof Positive for Inventor v5 and v6, based on the technology of PrescientQA. http://www.avatechsolutions.com/products/software - - - Plot2PDF (US$152) converts CAD drawings (DWG, DXF, PLT and CGM) into PDF and DWF files. Thirty-day demo from http://www.softcover.com/fplot2pdf.htm after registration. - - - TransMagic R3.0 now supports Unigraphics and expands support for current versions of Pro/ENGINEER. http://www.transmagic.com - - - A 30-day free trial of AutoPLOT 6 is limited to AutoCAD, Word, Excel, PDF files and can be downloaded from http://www.hagerman.com/TSM/AutoPlot.html -- once the Web page is updated from "Coming Soon!"
New Newsletters/Webzines Patrick Emin wrote me last week, "I launched today CADxp, the French language CAD portal, after several weeks of preparation at http://www.CADxp.com . AutoCAD is the main subject for the time being, but my intent is to widen the subjects; for that, your collaboration would be appreciated as you can post articles, comments and messages on the forums."
People/Companies on the Move CADapult, an Autodesk System Center, has taken over the AutoCAD operations of Primeware, a Philadelphia AutoCAD reseller. CADVisions of Dallas opened its newest office in Wichita KS USA. Liquid Machines appointed Jon Hirschtick to its board of directors. Mr Hirschtick was the CEO of SolidWorks. LMS of Belgium announced the return of Willy Bakkers to the position of corporate vp of marketing. Mr Bakkers was previously with AVL List GMBH of Austria. Avatech Solutions appointed Donald R. “Scotty” Walsh as the company’s new ceo. Mr Walsh was previously with Brite Voice Systems.
Redo "One thing to note: our name is actually the IntelliCAD
Technology Consortium, not the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium."
"I was definitely surprised to see a letter about Alibre's
pricing. Thank you for pointing out the math error made by the letter
writer. He also assumes that renewal is required for Alibre Design
when, of course, it isn't. Alibre Design customers get a perpetual
license -- the software continues to run even if they don't renew
their maintenance at the end of the first year."
Computer News Summaries Windows 2000 servers are cheaper to run than Linux ones, sometimes, says an IDC study which was, by strange coincidence, sponsored by Microsoft. - The Register
By the end of the year, Sony will include StarOffice v6 on most consumer desktop PCs sold in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, replacing Microsoft's Works or Office. "The thing to note here is that since the close of the antitrust remedy, OEMs are feeling more secure in making non-Microsoft choices for bundling," said Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist for Sun's European office. - CNET
Market News The upFront.eZine stock index is at www.cadwire.net/to?upfrontezine/stocks
The WorthWhile Web http://civis.wigner.bme.hu/020530fahrschule/
Letters to the Editor "After Visio, a few of us started a computer game company;
we did four titles published by Activision. We realized a need for
a better tool to create real time 3D environments, and we migrated
back to what we do best: making commercial data authoring tools.
Re: HTML "Changes in what way? Not to HTML format I hope! Anyhow,
please put a 4 votes against HTML format eZine from this office.
Plain text has zero possibility (afaik) for virus, which is why
we like it!" "We use GroupWise mail client at work and it's not a very
nice client for HTML messages. Also, HTML format have the downside
effect to be exposed to all sort of malware in Outlook and compatible
mail clients." "I receive a number of IT and CAD related newsletters. The
plain text ones (with one exception) are much easier to read. I
also find their content to be better. Too often, editors of HTML
newsletters focus on fancy fonts and colors rather than the quality
of the content." "My CAD e-newsletter used to be in HTML (the first 34 issues).
But after some troubles concerning virus suspicions (fortunately,
they were wrong), I changed to PDF." "Hope you stay with the plain text version of you excellent
newsletter." "I think there are too many users using Pine [email client],
etc, without support for HTML. Despite that, HTML is slower, and
reminds me too much of those stupid spams one gets everyday." "Yeah, I have an objection to switching upFront.eZine to
HTML format. The format is fat, bloated. Except for making typefaces
pretty, HTML in an ezine like your's adds nothing to imparting information.
"Not everyone runs email software that displays in-line
HTML, nor wants to. Some security-conscious people avoid it because
it allows crude email monitoring via Web bugs. I will unsubscribe
if the newsletter becomes HTML-only." "Please enter my vote for text-only newsletters. I have
yet to see a newsletter go to HTML that it didn't make it take forever
to load a bunch of useless graphics that add nothing to the content. "I do not like HTML e-mail because so many people abuse
its formatting capabilities, as well as ability to harbor virii
and worms etc. I am probably in the minority here but I ask that
if you do chose to go to HTML format, could you please keep it to
the KISS principal and avoid the varying fonts, bight colors, fancy
backgrounds that make it hard to read? Embedding pictures, sounds
?!?!, flashing GIFs, rollovers, etc, these all do nothing to enhance
the readability of a message but people still consistently spam
up my inbox with messages full of this. - - - "Keep up the good work. Your ezine is truly the only one
that I retain and file for future reference."
Notable Quotable "Open up the doors and let the music play;
|
|
Return to www.upfrontezine.com. Entire contents copyright ©2002 by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. Article reprint fee $500. All trademarks belong to their respective holders. "upFront.eZine," "Talking About CAD," and "On your desktop every Tuesday morning" are trademarks of upFront.eZinePublishing, Ltd. Letters to the editor may be reproduced in an edited form for clarity and brevity. Opinions expressed in letters are not necessarily shared by upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd. |
donations This e-newsletter is shareware. You may read this free. If you would like to support the author in his work, I suggest a donation of US$25.00 to PayPal in the account of grabowski @telus.net. Click here to make payment.
|
